Jon Cable (JonnyOThan)
JonnyOThan is a Bungie Employee. His account was created on the 1st of December 2006. JonnyOThan's current title is 'Bungie Employee' and he has posted over 300 times. He works as a "Sandbox Engineer Extraordinaire" at Bungie. His official full-time start date at Bungie was 6/11/07, but he had interned for about 7 months in the summer and fall of 2006. History Taken from Jon's 'Breaking In' article: Q. Who are you and what do you do? A. I’m Jon Cable, and I’m a Sandbox Engineer Extraordinaire here at Bungie. “Sandbox” means toys like weapons, vehicles, physics, secret military projects, et cetera. “Engineer” means I write code. I think you get the “Extraordinaire” part. I work closely with the designers like Tyson, Sage, Christian and Derek to take their ideas and make them actually function in the game. I also do occasional multiplayer work – especially when it concerns sandbox elements – since that was my main job for Halo 3. Q. What are some of the toys in your sandbox that you use for inspiration outside of work? A. Games of all kinds are my inspiration. For as long as I’ve been playing games (which is as long as I can remember), I’ve always been trying to “take them apart” and figure out how they work – how they did their effects, physics, AI, stuff like that. My hobbies include making and playing games, working on my car (an RX-7) and playing with my dog. Q. Complete the following sentence as you would have at twelve years of age: When I grow up, I want to be a… A. I think at 12 I wanted to be a game developer. Before that I wanted to be an aerospace engineer. I liked paper airplanes. A lot. Sometime in high school I wanted to be an architect – it wasn’t until my senior year that I really decided that game development was the one thing I would always love to do. Q. Did you get any guidance during your time in High School? A. I remember one test saying something about an electrician. I think the system was so old it didn’t know what a computer was. I tried to talk to authority figures in high school as little as possible. Q. Did that aversion to academic authority lift long enough for you to earn a college degree? A. Yep – a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Michigan. Q. And how did you end up first make contact with Bungie? A. I was interning at Microsoft in the summer of ’05. We had a weekly Halo night where we played on system link in the conference rooms on these big projectors. I met another intern there named François, who was working at Bungie in level design. I asked him to get me in touch with someone here, and a while later Chucky contacted me and we started the interview process. I still had two years of college left, so I got an internship for the next summer. Q. What did you bring along to the interview process proper? A. I brought my laptop with a couple games I had written. I didn’t get a chance to show them off until the very end. But mostly I just came prepared to meet whatever challenge was thrown at me. Q. Is there one moment in the interview that sticks out in your memory as being particularly challenging? A. I had a hard time finding the building. Most Microsoft buildings are easy to find – big signs and numbers out front. Not this one. Looking back on the actual questions, I think I could have done a lot better. But I was really excited about the challenge and really determined, and I think that showed. Q. In one sentence, describe what it’s like to work at Bungie. A. It’s like being Sisyphus, except the hill is infinitely high. “The struggle itself is enough to fill a man’s heart.” Thanks, Wikipedia. Q. Any advice for aspiring applicants looking to push boulders up an endless incline? A. It’s never too early to start game development as a hobby. Modding games like Halo PC, Counterstrike, Warcraft, et cetera is a great way to get a start in game design. If programming is your thing, go check out XNA. It’s got a great community for aspiring developers, and best of all it’s completely free! Links Link to Bungie.net Profile. Jon's 'Breaking In' article